COLLEGE RUGBY: Rice represents school, city well in offbeat sport

Club sport attracts athletes of every stripe to game favored on East Coast

TOM BEHRENS, Chronicle Correspondent

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Every student who attends Rice University is guaranteed a top-flight education on a beautiful campus situated in the middle of one of the largest cities in the South.

Only a select few, however, get to represent the school on a snowy field on the East Coast. Will Wood was among 15 Owls who found themselves in exactly that situation this spring.

"I haven't seen real snow in years," said Wood, who helped Rice to second place in its division in the 41st Annual Cherry Blossom Rugby Tournament in Washington, D.C. The tournament is one of the top rugby tournaments in the country, with teams from all over the United States competing for top honors.

"It was tough playing that early-morning game," Wood said, "our cleats all gunked up with snow."

Head coach Ed Brown rated that game, the Owls' first of the tournament, as the toughest the team played. Rice faced Cornell University, and while the goal and sidelines were cleared, the rest of the field still had a snowy mantle.

"We were knocking on the door in the last minute," Brown said. "When the whistle blew, we were down inside their 20-yard line, just one try from winning."

While the underdogs from Houston lost that battle 10-6, they won the war, figuratively. The team rebounded, beating the University of Virginia and Longwood University while finishing second in pool play. In the plate bracket, the Owls defeated Fordham and George Washington and lost to East Carolina, ending up with a 4-2 record.

They finished fourth overall in their first appearance at the prestigious tournament.

Brown said the Owls faced a David-and-Goliath situation when taking on some of the bigger clubs.

"Cornell typically has a good rugby program," the coach said. "They have a lot of enrollment at Cornell, like 25,000-30,000 as compared to 2,500 at Rice, so you have a lot more kids to pull from. Typically East Coast rugby is some of the best rugby in the country, so we knew we were playing some tough teams."

Rugby at Rice, as it is at most schools in the U.S., is a club sport. Probably the best Rice season was 2000, when the team went to the final round of 16 in the season-ending tournament, playing teams such as Army and Princeton, and ending up rated the eighth-best team in the United States.

Come next January when the rugby season begins anew, Rice will again field two teams, one with more experienced players (called 'A-side') and one for those wanting to learn more about the game and looking for multiple opportunities to play ('B-side').

The sport of rugby traces its origins to Europe. Fifteen players from each team try to put the football across the goal line of the other team. Along the way there's plenty of tackling, pushing, blocking, shoving, grunting and groaning.

Still, "you are not just running around wildly," Wood said. "There is a lot more control than it looks like from the sidelines. Agility and staying in shape are important."

A try, or score, involves grounding the ball (touching the ball to the ground) over the goal line at the opponent's end of the field. A successful try results in five points. A conversion goal is worth two points; penalty goal, three points; and drop goal, three points. Players can gain ground only by running with the ball or by kicking it — no forward passing.

What's more, players are not protected from the contact by protective pads and helmets as in American football.

"Anybody who is athletic and has a little bit of toughness can play the sport," said Kent Bayazitoglu, a Rice rugby alumnus and now an assistant coach. "At practice, the players learn how to take on contact. The potential for injury when you play rugby is there, but if you are prepared for the contact you can really decrease your chance of getting hurt."

Wood, who played out his last year of eligibility on the Rice football team in December, said he likes rugby for two reasons: the contact and the atmosphere surrounding the game. He said it's more like a game than football is.

"When I was playing football it was more like a job," said Wood, who stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 285 pounds. "Rugby was more like a game."

Nothing exemplifies the informal nature of the game more than the fact that, when game time arrives for B-side games, it's perfectly acceptable for teams that come up short of players to recruit from other teams for that game.

"You go out and play the game and try to kill everybody in front of you," Wood said, "and then after the game you go to the bar and have a beer with them, have a good time."